


Wait, did you just say Wednesday?

by EliaAlice



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Gen, I can't write Bering and Wells fic that isn't heavily featuring Claudia apparently, also I haven't seen the show past s04e15, and yes it's an Instinct fix-it again because that's all I can write at the moment apparently, anyway this was supposed to be a 5k one-shot and instead it's 18k total, as per usual other characters make an appearance but not enough for me to tag them, get ready, it's REALLY angsty on a lot of fronts though - you've been warned, lmao why am i like this, side note, so just admit that while this is set three months later it totally disregards canon, tagging Claudia & H.G. in the relationships because their friendship is one of the main topics here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 05:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16402142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliaAlice/pseuds/EliaAlice
Summary: The alarm sounds at exactly 6:50 am every morning, waking up Myka without a fault, and the same day starts all over again. She doesn't have a say in it, unfortunately.How long will it take for her to break free of the time loop, why is it happening, and what will fix this terrifying situation exactly?





	1. Claudia

**Author's Note:**

> Well... This got wildly out of hand once Claudia threw away my original plan. (Yeah, half of my writing process is pulling my hair because Claudia refuses to cooperate, or occasionally Myka. Don't ask.) It was supposed to be short, and instead it's an 18k monster that I'll be posting in three parts - one every day, starting now.  
> This is totally inspired by the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Here I Go Again". Thinking about it is literally what got me to start outlining this, because it was just too great of an angsty idea to pass up on once it had crossed my mind.  
> Anyway, I'm going to cut myself off now before I start rambling.  
> Quick warning, though: the Bering and Wells scenes don't actually start until the second chapter. Please be as patient reading this fic as I had to be while writing it T_T

The sound of her alarm wakes Myka up with a start, almost causing her to bang her head against the headboard of her bed. Groaning, she rolls around and reaches out blindly to her bedside table, feeling around until she finally manages to half-punch her alarm clock with more force than strictly necessary. It’s 6:50 am, she notes, same as usual – except she could have sworn she had switched off her alarm before she’d collapsed into bed at almost midnight the previous day.

Well, obviously not.

Anyway, it’s way too early to be alive after the artifact hell she went through only a few hours ago, in her opinion, so she decides she’ll go back to sleep for a while. There’s no reason for her malfunctioning alarm to keep her from sleeping in as she had planned.

 

*

 

There’s no way she’s going to be able to sleep in.

Not with the loud, incessant bickering she can hear coming from downstairs.

Myka gives up on joining the arms of Morpheus again after less than half an hour of trying.

 

*

 

“Oh hey Mykes”, Pete greets her mid-laughter as she enters the B&B’s living room, “missed your alarm?”

“How can you be so chipper so early in the morning?” she groans, in a rather sour mood after the way her day started.

Pete shrugs. “Easy. It’s a beautiful Wednesday and we had no ping during the night, so I can enjoy a delicious breakfast in everyone’s company instead of driving to the nearer airport ASAP. It feels pretty nice. What’s gotten _you_ so grumpy? Wait, did you swap bodies with Artie?”

Instead of answering, Myka heads straight to the coffee machine to pour herself a mug, needing the caffeine to wake her up a little bit more. Claudia and Steve keep having an animated discussion in the background while Pete looks at her with growing worry rather than joining the argument again, but Myka doesn’t care. No one sounds like people who had to wash goo from all over them at near midnight last night apart from her, and she can’t make sense of it. It’s almost as if she woke up in an alternate universe at this point, or—

“Wait, did you just say Wednesday?” she asks suddenly, sharply, so seriously that everyone stops talking to look at her instead.

“Myka?” Claudia says cautiously.

It’s a prompt to elaborate, she’s well aware, but she needs confirmation before she really starts to worry. There’s no need to freak everyone out for nothing.

“What day is it?” she insists, not missing the confused glances her three friends exchange but not caring in the slightest. “Answer me, it’s important.”

“Well”, Pete says, frowning now, “since yesterday was Tuesday, that makes today Wednesday, unless the days magically swapped places during the night and no one’s told me yet. Mykes, what’s going on?”

“Did you get all gooed up yesterday? Any of you?”

Steve speaks up for the first time. “Myka, I don’t think any of us understands what you’re talking about.”

Okay. Now, she’s fully awake.

And she didn’t even need any caffeine for that, the mug long forgotten on the table beside her.

“Yesterday was Wednesday for me”, she explains slowly, trying to make sense of things as she speaks. “We had an artifact disturbance in the Warehouse – a, uh, an influx of energy knocked an overzealous vacuum down a shelf, and then it, um, it kind of ingested a few dozen artifacts nearby by the time we got to it? Does _any_ of that ring a bell to you?”

Their faces give her enough of an answer.

“It exploded before we could get every artifact out”, Myka continues, growing frantic all of a sudden as panic starts to set in, “and that— that started a chain reaction that took us hours and almost a ton of goo to contain. We only made it back here late, it was night outside already, and we— we went to sleep at almost midnight after using the entire B&B’s hot water reserve to shower the goo off of us. It’s— Am I the _only one_ who remembers that?!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a very realistic dream?” Steve questions carefully.

Myka shakes her head with desperation, unable to push words of denial past the giant lump that has taken residence in her throat.

“Because if it wasn’t a dream”, Steve continues, “then—”

“It’s a time loop!” Pete finishes, sounding way too excited about it considering what it would mean for Myka if he were right.

“It could’ve been caused by one of the artifacts swallowed by the vacuum you mentioned, or maybe a combination of artifacts”, Claudia theorizes.

“Stop”, Myka gasps out. “Just stop. I’m not— I’m not _stuck_ in a _time loop_. There has to be— There has to be another explanation for this. An artifact erased a day and I’m somehow the only one who remembers it for some reason, right? That’d make more sense.”

“Maybe”, Claudia concedes then shrugs. “Well, I guess you’ll know which one it is the next time you wake up, huh?”

“Um, guys? Before we jump to conclusions, shouldn’t we wait to see if anything that happens today is similar to what Myka remembers?” Steve points out. “I’m just saying.”

“Where is Artie? I need to see him, he might have an explanation or know what caused this”, Myka suddenly realizes.

Her thoughts are going a mile an hour and she’s really, _really_ trying to force herself to stay calm, but she’s not doing so well. Pete’s mention of a possible time loop sent her into a spin that she has a hard time getting out of, and she just desperately needs Artie’s knowledge to help her think about this rationally.

“He’s already at the Warehouse”, Claudia replies. “Do you want us to go with you now?”

“We’re coming”, Pete decides before Myka can even open her mouth, “and I’m driving. I’m not letting you touch a wheel in that state.”

She has to admit that she wouldn’t trust herself on a road with such shaky hands either.

 

*

 

Artie doesn’t have the beginning of an idea why Myka seems to be reliving the same day a second time – the astrolabe is a sure no since she would have had to use it herself, and he can’t think of any other artifact that has the power to manipulate time like that.

She forces herself to take a deep breath and not panic too much.

 

*

 

They get an artifact disturbance at exactly the same time as Myka remembers.

They contain it in less than half an hour, guided by her knowledge of the events that would have naturally unfolded.

She’s definitely freaking out by the time they’re done.

 

*

 

They spend the rest of the day doing research.

They come up empty-handed.

 

*

 

Myka wakes up to the sound of her alarm _again_ , even though she’s entirely sure she switched it off before going to bed this time.

In her haste to get an answer, she doesn’t even think to check the date on her phone – just runs downstairs and barges into the living room nearly out of breath from sheer anxiety alone.

“What day is it?” she asks – demands, really –, startling everyone in the room.

“Good morning to you too, Myka”, Claudia shoots back, an eyebrow raised questioningly as she stares at her.

“Just… answer the question, please”, she nearly begs, already terrified of what she instinctively knows she’s going to hear.

“Well, yesterday was Tuesday, so unless the days magically swapped places during the night or something, that makes today Wednesday”, Pete says slowly. “Mykes, are you alright?”

“No, I’m not alright”, she cries out, the situation finally hitting her fully. “I seem to be reliving the same day over and over again, and I have no idea why or how to make it stop!”

Claudia rushes to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezing comfortingly. “Woah there, take a breath! We’ll figure this out, it’s what we do”, she promises.

“We found absolutely nothing yesterday”, Myka replies, focusing on getting her breathing under control more than anything else. “Or, well, during the previous loop that doesn’t exist for anyone but me, I guess”, she adds in between gasps for air.

“It was only one day”, Claudia reasons. “If you’re really stuck in a time loop, then hey, see the bright side! You have virtually unlimited time to figure out what’s going on! And we can – we _will_ help you every time. You know that, right?”

Myka lets her head drop on Claudia’s shoulder and nods. “Yeah, I know. Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”

 

*

 

Claudia starts to have some serious regrets during the third occurrence of the same day.

Sometimes, she thinks as she mentally kicks herself, _sometimes_ , she should _really_ learn to have some impulse control and consider the consequences before she acts.

(Understand: before she decides to play around with stuff that may or may not be an artifact.)

You’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now, after all the times she got herself in trouble since she arrived at the Warehouse, but, well… apparently not.

She’s not even entirely certain that she’s responsible for the time loop, though. She believes she is, but she has no way to be a hundred percent sure; for all she knows, it _could_ indeed be due to an artifact or a combination of artifacts that got activated by the vacuum, like she suggested during the previous loop. It just… doesn’t sound like the right explanation.

She can’t bring herself to tell Myka that she’s aware that time keeps resetting at midnight too, though. Not yet. Not before she knows a little bit more about what’s happening. Not after choosing to pretend that everything is normal right from the moment she realized she was repeating a day for the first time. Not until she can figure out the best way to stop this – or a way that she’s sure will break the loop rather than risk making it go on for eternity; that’d be good enough for her.

So Claudia plays her part. She acts as though she had, like everyone else but Myka, no memory of the previous Wednesdays, and plans to keep doing so until – at the very least – she can better understand what she sent into motion exactly.

It doesn’t stop her from feeling like a giant fraud.

Or downright like an asshole when she tries to comfort Myka without telling her the only thing that could really help her at this point: that she’s not alone, that _someone_ has even a vague idea what might be happening.

She plays her part, and buries herself neck deep in research as soon as they arrive in the Warehouse that time again.

 

*

 

On the third repetition of the day, or fourth occurrence overall, Myka almost doesn’t leave her bed. She just goes downstairs to give the others instructions on how to avoid the artifact disturbance, and then she walks back to her room and lets herself simply flop onto the mattress.

The day may repeat itself, waking her up at always the exact same time, but her own body doesn’t reset the way everything does, unfortunately. So she’s simply too exhausted to go through another loop like that again without getting some actual sleep.

She spends the day in some sort of semi-consciousness, a series of naps riddled with nightmares that aren’t exactly worth much in terms of rest.

 

*

 

She stays in bed during the fifth day as well. She doesn’t even bother giving instructions, this time, just telling Pete that she’s sick and will stay in bed when he knocks on her door before leaving for the Warehouse in the morning.

It’s not like it’ll matter in a few hours anyway.

 

*

 

By the time the sixth day rolls around, Claudia has a plan.

(Or, at least, some sort of idea how to maybe hopefully get some definitive answers.)

She leaves for the Warehouse as soon as she wakes up, running out of the B&B just in time to jump in the car with Artie, and abandons him as soon as they arrive to head for the archives section at a brisk pace.

If, despite her impressive hacking skills, computers cannot help her learn more about the artifact she found, then she figures that old, dusty papers might. She stumbled upon the notebook _inside the Warehouse_ , after all, so it had to have been collected and described at some point – and probably before the computer era began, since it never got added into the system. It’s the most logical explanation.

(The years working at the Warehouse have taught Claudia that way too many artifacts were missed during the transition to modern-time technology, much to her chagrin.)

She spends five hours opening box after box of old records, but she does eventually find something that vaguely looks like what she’s searching for: fragments of a detailed drawing of what is without a doubt the artifact she used on a half-burned piece of old paper, along with the partial words “eus’ noteb” scribbled next to it in an elegant handwriting and a signature that makes Claudia’s heart jump involuntarily.

Oh. Oops. Shit.

Things just got a little more complicated.

 

*

 

She books a ticket to Wisconsin on the next available plane and leaves for the airport as soon as she’s out of the Warehouse.

She ignores Steve’s call of “where are you going? Claudia, what’s going on?” behind her, in too much of a rush to bother making up an explanation that he won’t remember in a few hours anyway, and silently counts her blessings that Myka stayed in bed at the B&B this time again. With how wildly off-plan for the day her behavior and actions are, she fears she’d have tipped her off to something otherwise.

 

*

 

During the drive from the airport in Wisconsin to H.G.’s house, Claudia can’t stop drumming her hands nervously again the steering wheel. Which is ridiculous, really, since this is a _time loop_ and she’s ninety-nine percent sure that Helena isn’t aware of it (otherwise, there’s no way she wouldn’t have at least _called_ the Warehouse by now, bullshit about a normal life or not), but Claudia can’t help it.

There’s so much she wants to tell H.G. and so little at the same time, and she just never planned to next meet her under circumstances like those.

Not after the three months of total radio silence since Pete and Myka came back from Boone.

Not after H.G. never bothered to contact _her_ specifically even just once since Artie used the astrolabe – since that damn woman literally ran away from the Warehouse without a look back.

Claudia is hurt, and pissed, and definitely going to have a conversation long overdue with a certain Helena G. Wells who’s currently pretending to be named Emily Lake instead.

Bullshit.

Bullshit, bullshit, _bullshit_.

 

*

 

It’s a kid who opens the door when she knocks. Adelaide, Claudia immediately guesses.

Adelaide who’s looking at her curiously, obviously trying to gauge who she’s dealing with.

“Hi. Who are you?”

“Hi! I’m looking for H.G.”, Claudia says bluntly, not bothering to introduce herself. “Is she here?”

A glint of recognition lights up in Adelaide’s eyes. “You’re from the same place as Myka, aren’t you?”

Surprised, Claudia has to take a few seconds to collect herself. “How did you know?”

“You didn’t call her ‘Emily’”, Adelaide answers with a knowing smile. “Are you here to make her go back to her amazing adventures?”

Taken aback once more, Claudia blinks down at her. “Hey, so how much about H.G.’s past do you know exactly?!”

“Enough to guess”, Adelaide eludes with a bright grin. “I’ll go get her, you just wait here.”

So Claudia does.

She waits until H.G. appears in the corridor, Adelaide in tow, her face a strange mix of confused and worried and some kind of calm façade that fools neither Claudia nor the kid for a second.

“Is everything alright?” is the first thing out of Helena’s mouth, and Claudia almost wants to laugh in her face.

Because, no.

No, things are not alright.

She’s not alright with Helena’s silent disappearance from her life.

Myka hasn’t been alright since she came back from this exact damn house – some of her usual light gone from her eyes, replaced by a thinly-disguised faraway look that has been worrying Claudia for months.

So how the fuck could she find a simple answer to such a loaded question?

In the end, she doesn’t answer.

“Get in the car”, is all she says instead.

“Claudia?”

“Get. In. The car, H.G.”, she repeats, letting her bubbling anger rise to the surface. “Unless you want Adelaide to hear some of the choice words I have for you.”

“Did something happen?” Helena insists, more guarded all of a sudden. “Is Myka alright?”

This time, Claudia can’t help it. She laughs, and it sounds hollow even to her own ears. “I guess you’d have to bother checking in with us every once in a while to know that, right? So nice of you to care about everyone you left behind only when you need us. Much appreciated. Now get in the fucking car, I don’t want to have to deal with another plane ride tomorrow.” Turning to Adelaide, who is looking at her warily now, she adds: “Don’t worry, I’ll get her back in one piece. I just need her to deal with her past instead of hiding away like a coward for once.”

Helena’s eyes harden, but she seems to make a split second decision and reassures Adelaide as well. “I will see what Claudia wants. You go tell your dad I’ll be back soon, alright?”

The kid nods and leaves, leaving H.G. alone with a pissed-off Claudia who motions wordlessly towards the car behind her.

“Can I finally get an explanation?” Helena asks once they’re both seated, Claudia already starting off the engine.

“Funny, and here I thought I’m the one who should be asking that!”

There’s a pause as H.G. tries to gather her thoughts. “What does this mean?”

Claudia gives up on putting the car back on the road and leaves it parked instead, turning to Helena with anger in her voice and tears in her eyes.

“You didn’t say a word!” she shouts, making H.G. flinch slightly. “Not a letter, not a phone call, no excuses, no explanations, _nothing_! You got your body back and then you just _disappeared_. You left us behind like we never meant shit to you, running off to start a joke of a new life for yourself, and you never even looked back. And I tried, I really tried to understand why you’d do that, but I don’t. I don’t get it – I don’t even _want_ to get it anymore, to be completely honest.”

“Claudia—”

“No. Save it, H.G. Don’t bother trying to sugarcoat it to make yourself feel better – unlike you, I won’t have the luxury of forgetting all about it in a few hours.”

Helena looks at her questioningly. “Why would I forget any of this?”

“Long story involving an artifact that I need your help with. That’s the real reason why I’m here, by the way, not just to scream at you about how much you hurt me. Though it feels good to say it out loud for once; no consequences and all that. I cared about you, y’know? And I still care, because I can’t help it, even if you obviously don’t anymore. I loved having you at the Warehouse. I loved working with you. I _looked up to you_. Well, what a great role model I chose, huh? Someone who bails the first chance she gets. Thanks a lot for that.”

H.G. is unbuckling her seatbelt before Claudia really has time to wonder why, and a second later there are arms around her shoulders pulling her into a tight hug.

“I never stopped to consider how much I might mean to you”, Helena confesses honestly. “And I never meant to hurt you like that. I’m sorry.”

For all her willpower, Claudia still ends up crying in H.G.’s shoulder.

“You never tried to talk to me again”, she chokes out, trying to hide her sniffling. “Even after Pete and Myka came back, you never bothered reaching out to me. I thought— I thought you— Yeah. It was stupid. Never mind.”

“Oh, darling, no, this is on me; it shouldn’t be your burden to bear and I’m sorry I made it so”, H.G. whispers, her chin on top of Claudia’s head and her hands rubbing comforting circles against her back. “I am rather good at making myself disappear from people’s lives, but it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you a great deal. I tried to cut all ties to the Warehouse when I assumed the identity of Emily Lake because it seemed… simpler, somehow.”

Claudia moves her head back to glare at Helena, obvious red-rimmed eyes be damned. “Simpler to lie to yourself if nobody can remind you of who you really are, yeah, I bet.” She scoffs. “I always thought you were the type who jumps head first into danger. I never pegged you as much of a coward, but hey! Here we are!”

H.G. averts her eyes with a soft sigh. “My love for risky situations tends to stop at my personal life, as you seem to have guessed.”

“You don’t say”, Claudia retorts, thinking about Myka’s haunted eyes anytime Helena is mentioned in passing.

How two people so obviously in love with each other can keep themselves apart by both trying to be too selfless for their own good will, she hopes, forever be beyond her.

“You mentioned needing my help with an artifact?” H.G. deflects, clearly eager to change the subject, and Claudia lets her.

She’ll be the only one to remember any of this happened after time resets again anyway.

“Yeah”, she mutters, turning around to get her bag from the backseat and pulling the half-burned piece of paper out. “There’s your signature on this thing, so I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about the artifact.”

H.G. recognizes the drawing instantly. “Galileus’ notebook. I collected that artifact for Warehouse 12. I had forgotten all about it! It resets time every twenty-four hours until—” She stops, suddenly remembering how Claudia mentioned she wouldn’t remember their discussion in a few hours. “Did you use it?”

Claudia shrugs noncommittally. “I think so? It’s either that thing or the artifact hell of the first day that caused the time loop to start, but judging by what you just said, I’d say it’s that notebook. So what does it do exactly? I mean, in details?”

“It erases the Earth’s latest rotation around the Sun repeatedly until the condition is satisfied, or until the limit is reached”, H.G. explains slowly. “What did you write in it?”

“I’ll answer that later”, Claudia evades. “I still need you to be a functional human being for now. What is the limit?”

“Can’t you guess it?”

“Last I checked I wasn’t a mind-reader, so don’t make this drag on and shoot!”

“Three hundred and sixty-five days.”

“Okay, I could have guessed that”, Claudia admits. “Though technically a year doesn’t last exactly three hundred and sixty-five days, but that and a quarter of a day more or something.”

“That is correct”, Helena answers, a fond smile curling her lips upwards, “but beside the point for this artifact.”

“Okay, and there’s no other way to stop the loops?”

“We theorized in Warehouse 12 that erasing the condition would break the notebook’s effect on time as well, but I cannot guarantee it”, H.G. answers. “Now, what is the condition you wrote?”

“Word for word?”

“If you may.”

Claudia looks her dead in the eye. “‘Myka comes back to her senses long enough to go back to Boone so she and H.G. will finally admit they’re two idiots in love with each other.’ And yeah, I put a lot of care in wording that.”

Helena opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

“What?”

A single word, filled with nothing but complete shock; so unlike H.G. and her rich vocabulary that Claudia almost wants to laugh.

Almost.

“To be fair, I had no idea it was going to start a time loop. I found the artifact under a shelf, no name or anything, and it just looked like a notebook filled with wishes so I thought hey! what do I have to lose?”

H.G. recovers enough to narrow her eyes at Claudia. “Need I remind you artifacts are not toys?”

“Thanks, _mom_ ”, the young woman retorts, rolling her eyes. “Spare me the lecture, I’m good with only one Artie on my back on a daily basis. Plus, you’re one to talk.”

Suddenly reminded of what caused her to end up in the Janus Coin for almost a year, Helena grimaces. “Touché. I suppose my own track record would make any reprimands rather hypocritical.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t even try.”

“Claudia, why…” H.G. trails off, suddenly finding herself unable to finish her sentence.

Claudia understands what she means anyway.

“Why did I write that down, specifically? Oh, I don’t know”, she says sarcastically. “Is it because you’re both idiots too stubborn to admit you love each other, because very selfishly that’d mean you’d come back, or because I’ve had to watch Myka suffer in silence for three months as she pretends she’s fine after losing you even though I can clearly see that she’s not? Pick the option you prefer, I guess.”

“I’m not—” Helena tries to deny, but Claudia cuts her off immediately.

“Do me a favor, H.G., lie to yourself as much as you want for the rest of the day, but don’t try to bullshit _me_ even more than you already have.”

There’s a pause after that; a long pause, during which Helena looks lost deep in her thoughts and Claudia just waits, hoping she’ll dare admit the truth about her feelings for Myka for once in her life.

She doesn’t.

She somehow decides to ask about the obvious instead.

“My entire memory will be wiped once the clock reaches midnight; correct?”

“A time loop will do that to you, yeah”, Claudia replies with a touch of sarcasm.

“But you will remember everything that happens until then.”

It’s not a question this time, but Claudia still feels compelled to confirm. “Unless time reset again unexpectedly in the last two minutes, I think we’ve been through that already.”

“So you won’t try to erase the condition.”

“Well, no. Because, one”, Claudia explains, holding up a finger, “I’d rather not risk possibly trapping myself in an infinite time loop or something, and two”, she continues, another finger joining the first one, “Myka kind of lost it when she realized what was happening, so I’d rather not have put her through that for literally nothing in the end.”

Helena nods, more to herself than anything else. “Wait here.”

Claudia doesn’t move as H.G. gets out of the car, too busy smiling about the lack of argument to really wonder where exactly she’s going.

Because if Helena truly wasn’t in love with Myka, then she’d definitely have told her by now that her condition is impossible and they’ll have to relive the same day for a year’s worth of loops.

So the lack of argument feels a lot like a quiet admission.

 

*

 

“How much do you like adrenaline rushes?” H.G. asks when she gets back into the car.

This time, it’s Claudia who’s too bewildered to find an answer. “… What?”

“There is a fair in the next city and I’ve been told the roller-coasters are incredible. Nate and I planned to take Adelaide in a few days, but… I thought the two of us could go now.”

Claudia frowns, incapable of understanding where this is coming from. “I’m not following.”

“I know it won’t make up for lost time”, H.G. explains, looking uncharacteristically self-conscious all of a sudden, “but there’s nothing I’d like more than spending the rest of the day with you. I warned Nate; he’ll stay with Adelaide alone tonight. I want you to have memories with me that won’t hurt, even if I will remember none of it in a few hours. If… If that’s what you want, of course.”

Claudia, once the moment of shock subsides, darts forward to pull H.G. into a messy – and probably painful, given how hard she squeezes – hug before pulling back and grinning from ear to ear.

“Roller-coasters are my _jam_ ”, she almost squeals. “And I bet you’re kind of an adrenaline junkie too, so I’m definitely dragging you with me in the most insane ones. Now come on, hurry up, give me directions! I want to make the most out of tonight and I can’t do that if I don’t know where to go!”

H.G. laughs, looking as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders for the first time since Claudia arrived, and quickly enters the address in the car’s GPS.

“Off we go!” she exclaims, smiling at Claudia with a twinkle in her eyes.

The young woman doesn’t need to be told twice and directs the car back onto the road as soon as she knows which way to go, keeping her gaze straight ahead until she figures out how to say what’s burning at the back of her throat.

“I’m still hella pissed at you, by the way”, is what she finally settles on, “but I’ll have time to deal with that in another loop. For tonight, I’m going to take a break from wanting to scream at you some more and just enjoy having you back for a few hours, even if it’s not really real.”

“It is real”, H.G. corrects her. “At least, for you it is. Just because it’ll technically never have happened, doesn’t mean that your memories won’t be real.”

Claudia shrugs, not entirely convinced. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

 

*

 

When the clock reaches midnight, they’re sitting on a bench talking animatedly about physics and various inventions after riding enough roller-coasters to make them both dizzy, Claudia devouring popcorn while H.G. treats herself to some cotton candy.

(“Woah, color me surprised, I didn’t think you’d be into such a fluffy sugary treat!”

“So many things that were invented or popularized after I was bronzed are wonderful, truly. And certainly worth a try.”)

The loop ends all too soon.

 

*

 

When her alarm clock sounds in the room and signals the seventh day rolling around, Claudia wakes up with a smile on her face. She feels as if she were still talking with H.G. a second ago, and it’s hard to adjust to the abrupt change.

To admit that, now, she’s the only one who remembers laughing along with a carefree Helena on top of a giant roller-coaster as the descent appeared before their eyes.

She suddenly wants to cry.

 

*

 

It takes a lot for her to get out of bed, that morning.

The only reason why she forces herself is because it’ll be suspicious if she’s not awake and up before Myka, and also because she has a _real_ plan to end the loops now.

One that involves nudging Myka in the right direction – since, otherwise, Claudia is ninety-nine percent sure it’ll take forever for her to go there on her own.

She goes downstairs and starts bickering with Pete and Steve as usual, hoping Myka will get out of bed this time around. She’d rather not have to go drag her out of it.

(Thankfully, it turns out not to be necessary.)

 

*

 

“So you’re stuck in a time loop”, she repeats after Myka gives them a quick rundown of what is happening to her in the B&B’s living room.

“And I have no idea how to break it and I need your help. Yes.”

“How many loops so far and did we find anything useful before this one?”

Claudia already knows the answers to both these questions, but she has to play the part. Even though it makes her just a little bit nauseous.

She had somewhat forgotten the guilt weighing down in the pit of her stomach during the past three days, when Myka stayed in bed and she could focus on doing her own research, but it’s coming back with a vengeance as she’s suddenly reminded of how much she has to lie if she doesn’t want to betray herself.

“This is my seventh attempt at the same day”, Myka sighs tiredly, “and no, we never found even the beginning of an explanation for what is happening to me.”

Time for the nudge, then.

“Have you tried asking someone else for help?” Claudia pushes.

Myka chuckles humorlessly. “Who?”

“Uh, well, someone who knows a thing or two about manipulating time? Let me give you a hint: British, over a hundred years old, built a freaking Time Machine, knew about the astrolabe, and occasionally behaves like a giant dumbass. Ring a bell?”

Myka tenses immediately. “Do you think H.G. could have something to do with this?”

“No, but I think she might have some answers. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” Claudia insists.

(This is where this little game of pretending she doesn’t know anything is getting dangerous for her. Because H.G. is smart, and H.G. might guess who is responsible for using Galileus’ notebook, and then she might tell Myka, and then it’ll be game over on Claudia’s end.)

(Her original idea of pushing Myka to go talk to H.G. was a lot less risky before she learned that Helena collected the artifact herself, but, well… it’s not as if she has a choice now. It’ll have to happen for the loops to end anyway.)

“Mykes?” Pete prompts when the silence stretches on for too long.

Myka jumps slightly, as if she had forgotten she and Claudia weren’t the only two people in the room.

“I’d rather try to fix this without involving H.G.”, she finally answers, her voice a whisper more than anything else, but there’s still a finality to the statement that Claudia can’t fight.

Oh well.

She’ll just have to push a little harder during the next loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the show conveniently forgot how much Claudia loves H.G. too in season 4 when it decided to bullshit the whole thing, but I haven't, and I have FEELINGS about them. So I keep writing about them because I'm bitter. Sorry?


	2. Myka

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Things get a bit dark at some point in this chapter. I think it's light enough not to warrant a tw, but I'd still rather mention it here.)

Myka gives up on trying to protect her heart once she reaches the ten-loop mark.

They haven’t found any sort of useful information so far, unfortunately, which means that she has to consider Claudia’s suggestion now. She has to go see H.G. and ask for her help.

She envisions simply calling, but she can’t bring herself to do it. There’s something about the idea of only hearing Helena’s voice, without getting to see her as well, that makes it worse than driving eight hours to Wisconsin by herself. Even though she knows that seeing her happy with Nate will make her want to have another three-day-long nervous breakdown again.

(The only good thing about this time loop is that, if it happens, there’ll be no one else but her to remember it.)

Myka spends the eight hours in complete silence with her teeth clenched, trying to steel her heart for what’s to come. She feels a lot like she’s voluntarily throwing herself at a repeat of her last visit to Boone, irregardless of the fact that said last visit broke her heart in more ways than she’s willing to admit.

She really wishes she had a better solution than going to ask H.G. for help, but she really doesn’t.

 

*

 

When she knocks on the door in the middle of the afternoon, she’s not sure what she’s expecting exactly, but somehow Adelaide being the one to open the door this time again ends up making perfect sense to her.

Especially when she suddenly realizes that Helena is most probably at work so early on a Wednesday. She had never stopped to think and consider that before she left in a hurry this morning.

“Myka! Hi!” Adelaide exclaims, a lot more delighted to see her than Myka expected. “Are you here to see Helena?”

“I— Yes”, Myka answers, suddenly feeling a strong desire to run right back to her car and drive away. “But I just realized she’s probably not here that early, so—”

She’s cut off by Nate’s voice, coming from farther inside the house. “Adelaide, who’s there?”

“It’s Myka!” the kid exclaims happily.

The sound of hurried steps suddenly echoes behind said kid, and a few seconds late Nate appears in the corridor with wariness written all over his face.

Not that Myka can really blame him. Given what happened the last time she showed up on his doorstep, the distrust is perfectly warranted.

“Myka”, he repeats slowly. “I suppose you’re here to see Emily? Why?”

“Nothing like last time”, she quickly reassures him, sparing a glance for an innocent-looking Adelaide when it suddenly occurs to her that the girl, unlike her dad, called Helena by her real name just after she opened the door. “But I need her help with an… issue. It’s okay, I’ll come back later.”

“Oh no, you should stay here and wait for her!” Adelaide exclaims immediately. “Dad, can I show her my room? I just redecorated!”

Trapped between the desire to see Myka go away and his daughter’s puppy eyes, Nate hesitates for a few seconds.

“Please?” Adelaide insists, pouting a little, and by the way Nate sighs in response it’s obvious she has won.

Her victorious smile gives Myka, who at first hesitated between leaving anyway and staying to wait indeed, the unpleasant feeling that she just got trapped by a ten-something-year-old kid too smart for her own good.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on the subject, though, because Adelaide immediately grabs her hand and starts to lead her to her room, whose door gets carefully closed as soon as they’re inside.

“Are you here to get Helena back?” she asks very seriously, staring at Myka with a look that warns not to bother trying to lie to her.

“I—” Myka chokes on air and has to swallow hard to get her voice to work again. “No, kiddo, I’m not going to take her away from you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just need her expertise on something. Now, since when do you call her Helena?”

Without warning, Adelaide deflates and looks away. “Oh”, she says softly. “I hoped you were here to make her go back to her old life.”

Color Myka extremely confused and completely lost.

“You— What?”

“After you left, last time, she told dad and I a bit more about what she used to do before we met her”, Adelaide starts to explain as she goes to sit on her bed, looking defeated. “Not everything, of course, and I know she’s still hiding a lot more than she lets on – she taught me to read people; that includes her, even if I don’t think that was part of her plan –, but she said enough for me to know that what she calls ‘amazing adventures’ were all a lot like what happened here three months ago.”

“And?” Myka prompts, still not following.

“And that’s what Helena is meant for”, Adelaide sighs, “not a boring day job like she has now. Also, yes, she told us her real name – well, her real first name I guess, since that’s all we got. She did mention she prefers ‘H.G.’ but I can’t bring myself to call her that, it sounds too much like one of my favorite writers.”

Myka can’t stop the strangled cough that escapes her at the unexpected statement, or the one after that, or the ones that keep following as something goes down the wrong pipe and suddenly renders her unable to breathe in air properly.

Good thing this is a time loop and nothing she accidentally reveals now will matter in a few hours, because Adelaide is looking at her with suspicion written all over her face and Myka feels like H.G. would probably kill her for dropping such a truth bomb on the very kid she wants to protect from her past.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Adelaide questions, cocking her head to the side and narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

“Let’s just say that Helena’s past is a lot more complicated than she hinted at indeed”, Myka croaks when her body agrees to be semi-functional again. “And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”

“Her last name wouldn’t happen to be ‘Wells’, would it?!”

“Oh, you know what, screw it”, Myka mutters, “at midnight nothing that happened today will matter anyway. Yes, her full name is H.G. Wells, and yes, she was born in the 19th century. Also, yes, she wrote those books. Feel free to ask all the questions you want – today is your lucky day, I’ll answer them all!”

“Why will nothing matter at midnight?”

Of course, Adelaide just had to catch that one sentence that she’d half-mumbled under her breath.

“I’m stuck in a time loop”, she sighs, exhausted every time she has to remind herself of that. “Every day when the clock reaches midnight, everything resets and I’m the only one who remembers what happened while the day starts again. So you won’t remember any of this, which is why I don’t mind telling you. At least I don’t have to keep secrets for once.”

Adelaide’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree. “That’s so cool!”

“No, it’s not cool, it’s terrible”, Myka counters. “I have no idea how to make the loops stop and it’s driving me insane!”

“That’s the reason why you need Helena’s help”, Adelaide guesses. “Wait, did she time travel from the 19th century??”

Tired of standing, Myka goes to sit on the bed as well, trying to figure out how to explain the Bronze with words that’ll make sense to a kid – even though said kid talks like an adult more than someone her age and Myka actively feels like she’s interacting with a mini-Claudia or something.

“Not really. She got… frozen for over a hundred years so her body didn’t age; we call that being bronzed. She was… brought back, I guess, a few years ago. That’s when I met her.”

“It must have been hard to adapt to a completely different world”, Adelaide notes, looking pained.

“I suppose, yes”, Myka agrees.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I wasn’t with her the first few months. We only started working together later.”

Adelaide nods, slowly, processing this load of new information incredibly well considering how far-fetched it all sounds. “What do you do exactly? What are those amazing adventures Helena used to help you with? Is it always like last time?”

“Pretty much”, Myka answers, shrugging. “More or less dangerous, more or less scary, but yes, that’s what I do and what H.G. used to do too. I hunt down artifacts, which I guess could be described as almost magical objects with special properties, to keep the world safe.”

Adelaide nods again. “So why did Helena stop?”

“I wish I knew”, Myka sighs. “I mean, I kind of do, but… I can’t make sense of it. I think she’s scared, mostly. Too scared for me to get through to her with rational arguments, as I discovered a few months ago.”

Adelaide doesn’t answer right away, taking her time to mull Myka’s words over before she comments on them. “I think you’re right”, she says slowly. “I noticed she has trouble letting herself make deep connections, so yes, her feelings for you must terrify her.”

There’s a split second during which Myka wonders how it can possibly be that a kid so young manages to understand Helena better than most adults ever did, but then this thought flies far, _far_ away from her mind, because—

Her feelings for you.

_Her feelings for you_.

All air leaves her lungs in a rush, producing a strangely squeaky sound in the process, but Adelaide is apparently nowhere near done speaking her mind and seems to willingly ignores her meltdown even if she notices it.

“At first, I thought – I hoped this was why you were here”, she continues. “To get her back. Because you’re in love with her too, aren’t you?”

Is she?

She knows the answer to that question the moment she begins to think about it.

Deep down, she always knew, even as she refused to consciously acknowledge it. What she feels for H.G. was never simple physical attraction or even just a stupid crush.

“How—” she manages to breathe out before a wave of panic makes her throat close up entirely.

“I told you, Helena taught me to read people”, Adelaide answers with a little knowing smile. “Although, in this case, I think anyone with eyes can see how you two feel about each other. Well, apart from you both, apparently.”

Forcing herself to regain control of her body and emotions, Myka tries to steer the conversation away from this very dangerous topic before it makes her break down entirely. “Helena would never go”, she points out. “She wouldn’t leave you.”

“Am I the reason why she’s staying here?”

“In part, yes, I suppose. Even though it’s not why she left, now she has you and she doesn’t want to lose you.”

“Well, that’s _stupid_ ”, Adelaide scoffs, her whole demeanor switching to annoyed all of a sudden before she starts to rant animatedly. “Just because she wouldn’t live here anymore, it doesn’t mean that she would _lose_ me! She wouldn’t have to disappear from my life just because she’s away!”

( _That’s exactly what she did with us_ , Myka can’t help but think, even though she doesn’t say it.)

“And you wouldn’t mind not seeing her much anymore?” she asks with some disbelief instead.

“I’d miss her”, Adelaide admits. “She’s amazing and I really love her. But… I also want her to be happy. And she’s not happy here – not really. She’s happy to live with dad and I, she’s happy when we’re happy, but she’s not happy for herself. I can see it, even though she assured me that I was wrong the one time I talked to her about it. She deserves to be happy – and my dad deserves someone who can love him fully, too; something Helena will never be able to do, because she’s in love with _you_. That’s why I wish you’d get her to go back with you, where she belongs. And, you know”, Adelaide finishes with a sly smile, “also because if she started to hunt those magical things you mentioned again and I kept in touch with her, someday when I’m older I’d have a chance to join her on her amazing adventures…”

And incredulous yet amused laughter escapes Myka’s lips before she can even think to hold it back.

“Wasn’t getting kidnapped last time enough for you?”

“It was scary”, Adelaide acknowledges easily, “and before you and Helena found me I was terrified thinking about what would happen to me, but once I was safe… It also felt thrilling. A lot more than my boring day-to-day routine of going to class! Plus I think you guys have fun way more often than you get kidnapped, especially since you can kick everyone’s ass easily – I want to be like Helena and you when I grow up.”

“You’re a sweet but quite adventurous kid”, Myka remarks, smiling. “You’re a lot like Helena already. I can see why she’s so fond of you.”

“Thanks!” Adelaide replies with a huge grin. “I try—”

The muffled sound of the front door opening makes her pause and listen intently, cutting her thoughts short and reorienting them towards more pressing matters.

“Helena just came back”, she announces. “I’m going to go get her, if dad hasn’t sent her up to see us yet. Just wait here.”

Myka, abruptly pulled back to reality, tries vainly to adjust from the strange conversation she just had with a kid who talks a lot more like a grown-up than someone her age to the idea of seeing H.G. now after everything that’s just been said, and—

“Oh, by the way”, Adelaide adds with what is clearly fake innocence just before she opens the door, “since you’re stuck in a time loop, don’t you think you have the perfect opportunity to try to tell Helena how you feel about her, without having to face the consequences if it doesn’t go well?”

She gets out of the room with a knowing smile, leaving behind a frozen Myka who doesn’t know where to start sorting out her jumbled thoughts.

“Helena, come here! There’s someone waiting for you in my room!” she hears Adelaide call out, but the words don’t really register in her mind. She feels as if her head were in a fog or underwater, the sounds distorting around her, unable to reach—

“Adelaide, darling, I told you to keep calling me Emily even though you know my real name now”, Helena scolds her gently.

It’s H.G.’s voice that does the trick, rushing through her like an electric shock and unleashing panic in its wake. After months without hearing it, months replaying its sound in her mind more often than she’d care to admit and mere minutes after admitting to herself that she may or may not be in love with Helena (she definitely is), it crashes through her in a way that feels entirely overwhelming.

Too overwhelming.

She can’t deal with this. Not so soon after whatever the hell that conversation with Adelaide was. Not in this loop.

She’s in no state to talk to H.G. right now. She needs time to process what was said to her and time to order her thoughts.

She can’t do this. She needs to get out of there.

_She needs to get out of there before she breaks down_.

Myka bolts. It’s instinct more than any rational decision that makes her feet move, carrying her out of Adelaide’s bedroom and into the staircase, heart pounding and palms sweating and eyes looking anywhere but at the hall she’ll have to cross where Helena is without a doubt still standing.

She reaches the bottom of the stairs just as Adelaide and H.G. get there, feeling the need to run out and away until she can curl up in a ball somewhere far from here; until—

“Myka?”

There’s too much in Helena’s voice for her to analyze; surprise and confusion and softness and maybe even something resembling hope that she’s sure she’s only imagining, and Myka can’t do this.

_She can’t do this_.

She shoves past them without a word or a look, throat painfully constricted, aiming for the door before she can hear anything more.

“Myka, is something wrong?”

_Yes_ , she wants to answer. _Yes, everything is wrong, I’m stuck in a time loop and I have no idea why or how to stop it, and I had come here to ask for your help but I just figured out I’m in love with you instead because it was pointed out to me by this kid who is so much like you and I don’t know how to deal with any of this, so just let me get out this door before hearing the way you say my name breaks me for good and I lose what little is left of my sanity at this point_.

“I— I have to go”, she manages to choke out, missing the way both Adelaide and Helena look at her with worried eyes since she now has her back to both of them.

She opens the door as soon as it’s within her reach; almost runs out to her car in her haste to get away and frantically tries to start the engine as Adelaide finally follows her outside.

“Myka, wait!”

She doesn’t wait.

She drives away until she’s out of Boone and into the next town, not bothering to read its name or caring in any way, and stops at the first motel she can find to book a room for herself.

There’s no way she’s going all the way back to South Dakota in her current state, and she needs to be somewhere she can lie down and not move until the clock reaches midnight and makes her nightmare loop back to the beginning. A motel room seems just perfect for that.

She only realizes she’s shaking when she curls up around a pillow and starts crying.

 

*

 

Her phone buzzes, again and again, but Myka doesn’t look at any of the notifications. She just turns it off once she finds enough will to move, letting it drop at her side and clutching the pillow to her chest again.

She doesn’t hear any of the voicemails that H.G. leaves. Not the first one – the angry one asking her how she dared reveal her true identity to Adelaide –, not the one where she mentions she knows about the time loop now and begs Myka to tell her where she is so she can help, not the one where Adelaide screams “just be brave and tell her you love her!” in the background, and not the last one where H.G. wishes her luck for the next loop with a voice that sounds suspiciously like she’d been crying.

Myka doesn’t hear any of that.

She just stares blankly at the wall until the clock reaches midnight.

 

*

 

True to form, the alarm wakes her up at 6:50 in the morning the next day, causing Myka to send it flying across the room with a loud bang.

A minute later, there’s a worried Claudia at her door, but Myka just tells her to go away. She’s too exhausted to deal with other people, even a well-meaning little sister.

She wants this nightmare to end.

She wants to forget everything about the previous loops like everyone else does; stay blissfully unaware of what went on in them and go on with her life without the weight of it all threatening to crush her until there’s nothing left of her.

She doesn’t get out of bed that day again.

 

*

 

When Myka refuses to leave her room once more, Claudia gives herself three more strikes. Three more days like this until she erases the condition and sees what happens, hopefully saving Myka any more anguish.

She vaguely knows what happened in Wisconsin because H.G. called her at some point during the previous loop, worried out of her mind, but Claudia still has no idea why Myka ran out the way she did.

She doesn’t know what went wrong.

And she can’t very well ask without also revealing that she’s behind the time loops.

Three more strikes.

But she doesn’t want this to have all been for nothing, especially since she actively feels like shit about it now.

 

*

 

Myka walks down the stairs of the B&B two days later, grabbing her car keys without a word and getting out the door while Pete and Steve look at her exit with matching confused expressions.

One strike left, Claudia counts.

An hour later, she books herself a flight to Vegas.

She’s stuck in a time loop and Myka is going to go see H.G. again, so she might as well make the most of her day free of consequences while she has the chance.

 

*

 

Myka has been on the road for three hours when the accident happens.

She can’t stop thinking about what she’ll tell H.G. exactly once she gets to Wisconsin, going to meet her at her workplace rather than at the house – she learned her lesson the first time –, and so she’s too distracted to see the truck swerving dangerously into her lane before it’s too late.

She just has time to let out a soundless gasp and uselessly try to steer away before the two vehicles collide and everything goes black.

 

*

 

Myka wakes up screaming, struggling to take in her surroundings and figure out where she is while her heart beats a mile a minute, still convinced she is on a road with a truck coming at her and no way out she can see. The alarm keeps ringing in the room but she barely hears it, too focused on trying to fill her lungs with air to pay much attention to something so trivial.

Claudia barges into the room before she’s managed to fully regain control of herself.

“Myka? Myka, are you okay?”

“Bad dream”, she gasps out, unwilling to tell the real reason and disclose way more than she’s ready for at the moment. “Nightmare, really. I’ll be fine. I’m just never doing that again.”

By ‘that’, she means ‘driving all the way to Wisconsin like an idiot’.

There is another, much quicker way to get there, after all, even if it’ll require breaking her own rule about never using artifacts for personal reasons.

She’s stuck in a time loop, what does it matter if she does whatever the hell she wants?

That’s how, an hour later at the Warehouse, she grabs Rheticus’ compass and teleports herself directly in front of the door to Helena’s house.

It’s not Adelaide who opens when she knocks this time, thankfully. It’s Nate.

“Myka?” he asks, bewildered.

“I need to speak to Helena.”

He frowns, suddenly wary, and oh she really doesn’t have time for this.

“Nothing like last time, I promise”, she says flatly. “You and Adelaide are safe. I just need her help with something.”

“Emily?” he calls out, looking at Myka pointedly as he pronounces the name. “It’s for you.”

He turns around and walks back inside after that, leaving her hanging around awkwardly at the doorway. Thankfully, H.G. appears only a few seconds later.

“Myka? That’s a surprise! What are you doing here so early in the morning? Is everything alright?”

_No_ , she wants to answer this time. _No, I’m stuck in a time loop and I died in the previous one, and I’m in love with you and I wish you’d never run away from the Warehouse so I could hopefully be kissing you now, but it’s never going to happen and I’m all too aware of it. So no, nothing is alright_.

“Any idea what could cause a time loop?” she just asks instead, her voice almost cold, desperately trying to keep as much physical and emotional distance between them as she can.

(Lest she eventually become Icarus, flying too close to the sun until it burns her and she falls to her death to the ground.)

“Galileus’ notebook”, H.G. answers without hesitation, looking at her strange demeanor curiously and with what appears to be a bit of hurt too. “Do you know who used it on you?”

“I didn’t even know what was happening up until five seconds ago”, Myka points out, fighting the urge to close her eyes and cry from sheer relief.

She finally knows what’s been causing this. She has a name for it, and it’s a hundred times more than she ever got during the previous loops.

She starts having hope of getting herself out of this hell again.

H.G. must read some of what she’s not saying on her face, because her next question is careful and her eyes searching. “Myka, how many loops has it been for you?”

“I lost count”, she admits. “Somewhere around fifteen, maybe?”

Helena looks at her with pained eyes, extending a hand to reach out to her by reflex, but Myka moves away as if the touch would have burned her.

“What happened to you during those repetitions?” H.G. asks, her voice almost a whisper, pulling her hand back quickly and taking a step back to give Myka more space.

The answer is a nervous bordering on hysterical laughter. “Can we— Can we not do that here? I can’t— Not here.”

“Of course”, H.G. agrees immediately, not pushing the matter even though she’s obviously curious. “How did you come here so early in the morning?”

“Believe it or not, teleportation”, Myka answers with a weak smile, lifting her hand so H.G.’s eyes will catch on to the compass. “Where do you want to go?”

“You should choose. Not me.”

So Myka does.

She picks a place at random in the mountains, activates the compass, and teleports herself there with H.G.

The first thing she notices once the world reappears before her eyes is the silence surrounding them. It’s almost shocking after the noise of the city they left behind, a lot more so than the blinding sun in front of them that forces her to take a few seconds to adjust before she can take in the scenery properly.

They’re standing near the edge of a forest, directly under the bright blue morning sky, and the simple fact that they’re away from any sort of civilization makes Myka feel calmer all of a sudden. She hadn’t realized how on edge she really is up until she feels some of the tension drain from her shoulders.

“I died in the previous loop”, she reveals abruptly, feeling a wave of nausea hit her as she acknowledges that fact out loud for the first time. “I was driving to Wisconsin and a truck crashed into my car.”

Next to her, H.G. take a sharp intake of breath, obviously shocked by the reveal.

Myka doesn’t give her time to comment on it.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about this artifact, and if you have any idea where I could find it. If that’s even necessary to stop the loops.”

“Last I saw of it, Galileus’ notebook was in Warehouse 12”, H.G. answers at she goes to sit on a rock nearby. “I’m the agent who collected it. It will erase one rotation of the Earth around the Sun if a condition – a wish, if you prefer – is written in its pages, and do so repeatedly until the condition is satisfied or the limit of three hundred and sixty-five days is reached. The loop will—”

“Stop. Just… Just stop talking about it in future tense like it’s nothing more than a distant theory – like it’s not _currently_ happening to _me_ ”, Myka interjects harshly, putting a hand up almost protectively even though she knows that, rationally, it doesn’t make much sense.

H.G. nods, slowly, looking at her with such worried eyes that Myka has to avert hers. She can’t take it – not in her current state. If she doesn’t keep Helena at arm’s length, she’s going to either implode or do something rash she’ll quickly come to regret. If not both.

“You didn’t use the artifact, so you are the condition’s subject”, H.G. continues after a beat. “Only one or two people can be aware of the resetting of time depending on the situation – whether the person using the artifact does so for themselves or someone else. This is why I asked you if you know who used the notebook on you.”

“No one else but me seems to be aware of the time loops, so I really have no idea”, Myka breathes out tiredly.

“Alright, then our number one priority has to be finding the artifact’s location rather than its user’s whereabouts. Logically, it should have been transferred from Warehouse 12 to Warehouse 13, but if you couldn’t find any record of it, it might have been lost or stolen in the process.”

“ _Our_ priority?” Myka repeats.

“I’m coming with you”, H.G. confirms. “I know what the notebook looks like; besides, you will need as much help as you can get.”

“Don’t you want to go back to Nate and Adelaide, at least to warn them you won’t be there the entire day?” Myka shoots back, unable to keep the bitterness from seeping into her voice.

“I’m well aware it most likely won’t matter at midnight”, Helena replies softly. “We’ll fix this, Myka. I promise.”

“Yeah. I hope so.”

 

*

 

Myka teleports them directly into Artie’s office, giving him a near heart attack before he realizes how they appeared in the Warehouse and starts spluttering indignantly.

She ignores his rambling about using artifacts and security and _out of everyone here, you are the last person I expected this from_. They don’t have time for this.

( _She_ doesn’t have time for this.)

“Where are the others?” she asks authoritatively, for once disregarding the fact that he’s supposed to be her boss and not the other way around.

“What are you doing here with H.G.? What is going on?” Artie retorts instead of answering.

“I’m stuck in a time loop – and don’t ask me for more details, I’m tired of giving you guys the exact same explanation every twenty-four hours. Where is everyone else?”

Artie readjusts his glasses, looking at her somewhat warily. “Pete and Steve are doing inventory. Claudia left the B&B early this morning; I’m not sure where she is exactly.”

Myka frowns at that, fleetingly noting that Claudia’s disappearance isn’t in accordance with the day’s usual plan, but then she realizes that her waking up screaming – not to mention using the compass – threw the day wildly off the rails already and dismisses the thought. She has more pressing matters to focus on.

“I’ll go check the handwritten records”, H.G. announces as Myka sits down in front of the computers. “I’ll be more useful there than with technology.”

“Thanks”, Myka answers with a pale but honest smile, grabbing Artie’s Farnsworth to call Pete a second later.

 

*

 

By the end of the day, Myka has reached three conclusions.

One – they’re not going to find Galileus’ notebook by using Warehouse records. It’s absolutely unknown in the computer system, and the only clue H.G. could find in the boxes of old papers is a half-burned drawing of hers from over a hundred years ago. So they can’t even be sure the artifact was ever shelved in Warehouse 13, much less track it down from there.

Two – she really, _really_ should have remembered to try to prevent the artifact disturbance that had caused them to end up all gooed up during the first day. She could have done without repeating that experience, even if they contained it a lot more easily and quickly this time.

Three – if Pete looks at her with concerned eyes and asks her “are you okay, with H.G. here?” even just once more, she’s going to lose it. Entirely, completely _lose it_.

And she can’t afford that.

 

*

 

Myka wakes up the next day with the disturbing and unnerving feeling that she’s forgotten something important. Something regarding the time loop she’s stuck in, something H.G. told her yesterday—

She can’t remember the name of the artifact or what it does exactly. She can’t remember any of it.

The panic she feels when she realizes that comes close to overwhelming her. What even is going on?

She reaches for her phone; checks the date with the vaguest hint of hope that it’ll mean her nightmare is over even though she can’t find it in herself to believe that, but…

Wednesday.

She allows herself half an hour to break down and cry before she gets out of bed, heads to the Warehouse, grabs the compass and teleports herself to Wisconsin again, refusing to take any time to think lest panic submerge her for good.

She waits for H.G. to get out of the house, this time, instead of knocking as soon as she arrives.

She doesn’t think she’d be able to deal with Nate right now.

 

*

 

Myka intercepts Helena before she can get to her car and drive away to work.

“What artifact causes a time loop and why can’t I remember anything you told me about it before time reset again?”

“Myka”, H.G. breathes out, obviously shocked to see her appear in front of her like that.

“Answer me. Please… Please answer me.”

“Galileus’ notebook causes time to erase itself every twenty-four hours if it is activated”, H.G. reveals. “As for your lack of memories of my apparently telling you this already… Ah, bugger.”

“ _What_?!”

“It was one of my theories, after I collected it for Warehouse 12. This artifact has some sort of a self-preservation fail-safe – everything you learn pertaining to its functioning during a loop will be erased from your memory as the next one starts. It makes locating it much harder; since you seem to not be the one who used it, the notebook doesn’t want you to see the condition that was written in its pages.”

“The condition? What condition?”

“Yes, I suppose you forgot that as well”, H.G. sighs, then proceeds to explain everything to Myka in this loop again.

“Okay, so since I remember spending the day searching for clues in the Warehouse and finding none, I think it’s safe to assume it’s not there”, Myka notes, an edge of desperation in her voice. “But how am I supposed to find it if I forget all about it every twenty-four hours?!”

“Let’s try tracking it down from Warehouse 12 up to today”, H.G. suggests.

Myka nods, fakes a smile and forces herself to hold it together for just a little bit longer.

 

*

 

She breaks during the next loop, when she expects it less.

She went to get Helena using the compass again, having forgotten everything about the artifact causing her situation once more, and teleported them in the middle of the mountains as she did two loops ago so they wouldn’t have this conversation in front of Nate’s house as they did during the previous one. And it’s there, under the bright blue morning sky, that her nerves finally give up on her.

Externally, for anyone watching, it wouldn’t even make any sense that she’d break down at this exact moment. She’s not even talking, after all, she’s just listening to H.G.’s description of Galileus’ notebook for the third time in as many loops, but then one specific thought hits her and breaks the dam without giving her a warning first.

At the rate this is going, there really is no other way for her to end the loops than miraculously figure out what she’s supposed to do to fulfil the condition she knows nothing about or wait until the limit of loops is reached. Because she suddenly remembers all too well that her death a few loops ago changed literally nothing.

The tears are carving paths down her cheeks before she even realizes what is happening.

“Oh Myka, darling”, H.G. whispers, wrapping her up in a hug and holding her tight as she starts sobbing uncontrollably.

And, really, she had done her best to keep Helena at arm’s length until then; and in both previous loops, Helena had put great care into respecting her need for distance and space. But she hasn’t really put up boundaries this time yet, and H.G. is pressing her hands against her back with so much strength and softness all at once – like she wants to isolate and protect Myka from the world until it can’t hurt her anymore –, and…

And it’s all too much.

She stops fighting.

She lets herself crumble in Helena’s arms.

She cries until her eyes burn; until there are no tears left in her and all she feels are numbness and emptiness.

H.G. holds her the entire time, whispering hollow comforting words in her ear that she barely even pays attention to, because the only thing she can focus on is the heat of Helena’s body pressed against hers.

She wishes she could stay wrapped up in those arms until the three hundred and sixty-sixth day rolled around, freeing her of this infernal loop once and for all. She’s all too aware of the fact that she can’t.

“Why did you pick him if you’re in love with me?”

She doesn’t realize that she’s spoken the words out loud – barely even notices _thinking_ them – until she feels H.G.’s embrace go rigid.

“I suppose living the same day over and over again must lead to unearthing some secrets”, Helena murmurs, not bothering to try to deny Myka’s claim.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

(She doesn’t mention that ‘unearthing some secrets’ is, in this case, a lot closer to ‘I think you got more than you bargained for when you taught a very unusual kid to read people’.)

There is silence – a long silence during which neither of them moves, H.G.’s arms still around her and relaxing ever so slightly, until Myka finally gets an honest answer to the question that hasn’t stopped swirling at the back of her mind since she spoke with Adelaide.

“He’s safe. And there’s no risk of him breaking my heart, since it was never his to begin with and it never will be.”

Myka’s breath catches in her throat at the admission.

At the confirmation.

She wants to laugh hysterically at the thought of two people missing their chance that much – throwing it away without ever even allowing themselves to give it a try –, and at the reality of one of these two people being _her_.

What a pair of idiots they are.

“I wish you had listened to me at some point, and gotten off your cross and realized you deserved to have a shot at happiness in this new life that being debronzed gave you”, she sighs defeatedly.

“I am happy”, H.G. protests.

Myka looks at her for the first time since she started crying. “Are you, though? Are you _really_?”

Helena doesn’t answer, this time.

 

*

 

They don’t talk about it again in this loop.

They try to find some information about the artifact instead, as usual, and they come up empty-handed at the end of the day, as has been the case since Myka started searching for clues about her situation.

As the clock nears midnight, she braces herself for another day waking up to the sound of her alarm at 6:50 in the morning.

(She has no way to know how close she came to this being her final loop, ending her nightmare after she broke down in Helena’s arms.)

(If only she’d unequivocally admitted her own feelings as well.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean... It's canon that Adelaide is a smart kid. And she whispered this scene idea at me one day and I just had to write it. (Also, yes, she's kind of my self-insert in this fic. JUST TELL H.G. HOW YOU FEEL, MYKA.)


	3. Helena

Myka wakes up at 6:50 am with a sense of desperation settled deep in the pit of her stomach; the kind that can only come from being stuck in a terrible situation with not a single way out in sight. The feeling that nothing she does matter is pressing down on her shoulders, heavier and heavier with each loop, and she doesn’t know how much longer she can take it.

“No matter what you do, the loops start again, right?” Claudia asks rhetorically after Myka gives her, Pete and Steve a quick summary of the situation during breakfast.

“Nothing works. _Nothing_ ”, Myka confirms. “I’m out of ideas.”

_And out of hope_ , she doesn’t say, but she’s pretty sure Claudia reads it in her eyes anyway.

“You look… worn down”, Steve nods, concerned.

“Probably because I am”, she snaps. “Or maybe even worse than this.”

Which is why she’s not going to go see H.G. today. She needs some respite from hurting herself like that, being so close and yet so far from her over and over again.

“Okay, hear me out: take a break”, Claudia suggests.

“Do you know how to find the pause button for time loops?” Myka retorts, giving her a _look_.

“Not what I meant, doofus! You say nothing you do stops the loops, so quit trying for a little while. Have fun! No consequences, right? Then you can do anything you’ve ever dreamed of – all of us can. Let your brain rest a little; recharge your batteries and all that. I feel like you need it.”

An eager glint appears in Myka’s eyes as Claudia talks, shedding a new light on a situation that has been nothing but doom and gloom and spiralling down for her so far. She had never envisioned the time loops through that angle, but now the idea is enticing, especially given how much she needs to take her mind off of things.

“Pete?” she asks, a smile growing on her face.

“Need help?”

“I know I keep telling you to learn to be mature by some miracle, but for once I want you to do the opposite. Shoot silly ideas at me.”

“I’d be hurt you turned to him instead of me, but when it comes to being immature I have to bow before the master”, Claudia admits. “So come on, Pete. Do your best. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”

“We gotta prank Artie!” he exclaims, jumping up in his chair. “Like, a huge, _giant_ prank. The kind we’d never get away with if he remembered it.”

“I’m in”, Myka agrees immediately. “Let’s just… not use artifacts. I don’t want to risk worsening my situation by mistake somehow.”

“Deal”, Pete replies. “We don’t need them anyway – we can do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Everyone to the Warehouse now?” Steve guesses, seeing as their breakfast is long forgotten on the table.

“Everyone to the Warehouse now”, Myka confirms.

 

*

 

When Claudia told Myka to ‘do anything she’d ever dreamed of’… a pillow fight in the middle of planning out a prank on Artie isn’t exactly what she had in mind. She rather meant ‘go and kiss H.G. like we both know you’re dying to do’, but, well… That’ll have to wait for a few more loops, apparently.

She has already started plotting out how to make Myka understand what direction she’s truly pushing her towards, but it still doesn’t stop the guilt from gnawing at her insides. The loops have obviously taken a toll on Myka, Claudia can see it, and the sensible thing to do would be to try to erase the condition in the notebook as soon as she gets to it, but… she won’t do it. She can’t. She refuses to have put Myka through so much already for absolutely nothing.

(Because she’s well aware that, outside of extraordinary circumstances, both women will keep being too stubborn to tell each other the truth until the end of time.)

So she keeps playing her part, keeps giving subtle hints about H.G., and joins the others in their immature fun for the day.

It’s a change from travelling the world, which is what she did during the days Myka went to see Helena – going to places she’d always dreamed of visiting –, and it’s a nice way to transition to what she’ll do during the next few days as Myka will get to have more harmless fun.

Because, well… Up until then, Claudia could never be sure the current loop wouldn’t be the last, since H.G. was always involved, but now…

Now, until Myka goes back to Wisconsin, there’s no risk of tomorrow not being another Wednesday. Which means that everything, _anything_ is fair game.

Her list of things to do include hacking the NSA, going bungee-jumping, and sitting in Artie’s chair an entire day while refusing to give it back.

It sounds like a nice schedule to her.

 

*

 

Myka spends an entire week tagging along for all of Pete’s crazy ideas or doing only stuff that makes her feel good. She reads five books from the pile that’s been growing next to her bed due to never having time for them anymore; she goes to spend an entire day with her sister; she researches some topics she always wanted to dive more in depth in…

It helps her feel better. It undoubtedly does.

She’s not constantly on the verge of crying anymore, she actually manages to smile again, and overall, it kind of feels like these days are putting the pieces of her back together. Claudia really had the best suggestion, it turns out.

But she also knows that she’s been avoiding thinking about the one thing she currently wants to do above everything else. The one thing that she really shouldn’t do, for her own sake, but that she can’t seem to stop coming back to.

Along with one haunting question.

Would throwing caution to the wind and kissing H.G. then being the only one to keep memories of it help her finally start moving on, or would it just make her fall that much deeper?

One day, as she wakes up, Myka realizes that never getting the answer to that question after living through a time loop might hurt her just as much as discovering what option is the correct one. So she decides that, since she has very little left to lose at this point, she might as well set fire to her own pyre while she’s at it.

She goes to get Rheticus’ compass for the first time in a little while, teleports to Boone, and calls out to Helena when the latter steps out of the house minutes later.

“Myka?!”

Here they go again.

She quickly explains her situation, caught in a time loop with no way out in sight so far, listens to H.G.’s description of Galileus’ notebook though she doesn’t really care about it this time, and finally teleports them to the Warehouse after Helena offers to help like she always does.

Except she doesn’t teleport them to the _Warehouse_ itself.

Rather to her own room at the B&B.

“There’s something I should have done a long time ago”, she says to answer H.G.’s questioning eyes.

“And what would it be?” Helena asks, trying to keep her voice even even though her need to swallow hard before she speaks betrays her.

Myka doesn’t answer this time. She just takes a step forward, slowly, forcing H.G. to move back until the wall doesn’t let her go any farther, and pauses for a second there so she can assess the situation.

She searches for any sort of injunction to stop in Helena’s eyes; she find none. The only things swirling there are a hint of apprehension, maybe some confusion, but mostly what looks a lot like hope and desperation blended together in one single package.

Myka tilts her head down.

Helena meets her halfway.

She has no idea how long their kiss lasts. She only knows that, as soon as it becomes obvious that H.G. won’t pull away, she gets lost in it. Her hands come up to tangle in Helena’s hair, desperate for a feeling she knows she’ll never have again, and after that her brain short-circuits and she stops thinking altogether.

They’re both breathing heavily when they finally come up for air, resting their foreheads together rather than moving away. Myka doesn’t open her eyes just yet, refusing to let reality crash back in until it becomes absolutely necessary.

“I’m in love with you”, she whispers, her lips still so close to Helena’s she can almost feel them brushing against hers as she speaks. “I’ve been in love with you since long before I even realized it. And, at midnight, it won’t matter that I told you – it doesn’t matter if I tell you the truth, because you’ll forget it. In a few hours, you won’t remember any of this. But I had to… I had to tell you at least once. Because I know for a fact that you’re in love with me too, even though you chose Nate because _he’s safe and he can’t break your heart because your heart isn’t his_  – yes, _you_ told me that –, and I think… I think I’d rather have a single loop with you than never get to kiss you again.”

Her declaration is met with only silence for a while, but she still doesn’t dare open her eyes. She doesn’t want to see the way H.G. is looking at her, because she knows she wouldn’t deal well with a rejection if there were one.

“This is wrong, Myka”, Helena eventually answers, the sound barely audible, but it feels like a knife to the heart to Myka all the same.

She pushes herself away, feeling like her lungs won’t expand to accommodate air anymore and suddenly desperate to run away from her own room, but H.G.’s firm hand around her wrist stops her before she can even take two steps.

“I wasn’t referring to our kiss”, Helena promises, “rather to the fact that only one of us will remember it happened.”

Myka feels a hand cup her cheek and leans into it, too far gone and with far too little resistance left to do anything else. Her eyes flutter open, finally meeting Helena’s, before she quickly averts them, unable to handle the weight of their locked gazes.

“If our roles were reversed, I do believe living with ghost memories would bring me far more pain than joy”, H.G. continues, “and this is not a burden I wish upon you by any means.”

“I know”, Myka admits. “Rationally, I _know_ I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t even have kissed you, but I…” Oh, what does it matter anymore to hold back any truth? “I wish you’d be brave and love me, even if it was just for one day that would never technically truly exist.”

“I do love you”, Helena whispers, taking one step closer. “I was pulled to you since the moment I met you, for a reason I could never even begin to explain, and falling in love with you was easy. So very easy.”

(Not too far away from them, words in a notebook suddenly glow bright before the golden light slowly fades.)

(Myka has no way to know it, but the world cements into time again as they speak. This Wednesday will be her last.)

“To tell the truth, it was also very inconvenient”, H.G. grumbles half-heartedly. “It thwarted my plans, for one thing, then it made me long for your touch while I was split from my own body, and when everything was over, well… You deserve so much better than me.”

“Oh, no, don’t you even dare twist this”, Myka retorts, eyes suddenly blazing. “You didn’t run away because you thought it was the selfless thing to do or whatever other excuse you want to make up on the spot – you disappeared because you were _terrified_ by how much you cared.”

Helena doesn’t try to fight the claim. “How many times did we have that conversation on your end already?” she asks instead, defeated.

“Never. Not _once_. I just _know you_ , Helena, and you’re not nearly as much of a closed book as you think you are. You’re _frustrating_. You survived so much and you’re so deserving of happiness, but you’d rather deny it to yourself. You only let yourself admit how much you care when you thought you were about to die, and the rest of the time you hide it behind sarcasm and flirting. You love me, but you’d rather _bail_ because you’re too scared to face how you feel. And it might be the only thing that I actively hate about you – how much you try to push everything good for you as far away as possible when it starts getting real. The Warehouse, your job as an agent, Claudia, _me_.”

H.G. opens her mouth to say something, but Myka isn’t done. She’s far from done. She has a chance to finally let out what has been weighing her down for months without having to deal with any of the consequences later on, and she’s not going to let it pass.

If Helena won’t even let her have one day, then she’ll at least take the occasion to throw the truth in her face.

“Do you know what I was thinking, as I was telling you to make a home with Nate three months ago? As I was telling you to fight for him? I kept wishing you’d fight for _me_ , for once in your life. Because I didn’t have it in me to keep trying alone anymore – I still don’t. It kills me that I had to let you go, and it _hurts_ to an extent you probably can’t even imagine, but I didn’t have enough strength left in me to _not_ give up that night. I tried _so hard_ , after you called us, but you wouldn’t hear me out, and I… I had to admit I was fighting a losing battle at some point. If you’re willing to delude yourself enough to convince yourself that what you truly want is a ‘normal life’… I can’t compete with that – I can’t compete with H.G. Wells’ imagination – but _god_ did I wish you were just a little less good at creating stories, for once in your life. At least I’d have had a chance at getting through to you.”

She’s out of breath by the time she’s done with her tirade, anger rolling off of her in waves as she hastily pushes multiple strands of wild hair away from her face. H.G., in comparison, looks extremely calm, and if her eyes weren’t glistening so much Myka may have been fooled.

“Do you feel better now?” Helena asks after a beat, putting great care into keeping her voice even.

“NO!” Myka shouts, tears filling her eyes without warning. “Because at midnight it won’t matter that I just bared my soul to you, and tomorrow I’ll be back to square one for the upteenth time and I really don’t know how many more loops like this one I can survive!”

“And once time resumes flowing by normally, what will you do?” H.G. pushes, face unreadable.

“Cry from relief, probably”, Myka answers harshly.

“I meant about us.”

Myka barks out a laugh. “There is no _us_ , Helena, in case you haven’t noticed!”

“Because I never thought there could be.”

“… What?”

“You are right. Almost everything you said about me – you are right. I chose not to return to the Warehouse once my mission with the astrolabe was over because I was scared. But I mostly…”

H.G. has to stop to swallow down the lump in her throat, but she forces herself to continue anyway. The only thing she can do to alleviate some of Myka’s pain at this point is tell her the truth so it’ll follow her into the next loop, and that’s what she’ll do, no matter how hard it is for her to admit her weaknesses so openly.

“I mostly settled with Nate, _for_ Nate, because I never dared believe you were in love with me too. Not after everything that happened; not after what I did to you. Had I known, maybe… maybe my choices would have been different.”

“It’s a bit too late for ‘what ifs’”, Myka remarks tiredly.

H.G. smiles, sadly. “I know. And if I were selfish, I’d ask you to try to make me see reason one more time once I will remember such a conversation, but…”

“But you have no idea if I’d succeed”, Myka sighs.

“Yes.”

“I wish you’d realize how much better life feels when you don’t spend it collecting regrets.”

A sad smile pulls at Helena’s lips again. “I’m afraid it’s too late for me to have none, whichever option I’d choose. I may not love Nate but I do like him a lot, and the thought of abandoning Adelaide…”

“Adelaide would tell you to go”, Myka retorts. “She’d also tell you that you don’t have to disappear from her life just because you get back to having amazing adventures.”

“Did you— Did you talk to her?! About _me_?!”

“No”, Myka replies. “ _She_ talked to _me_. About you and about _us_. And I’m not looking forward to a repeat of that conversation anytime soon – she’s like a mini-Claudia who knows and understands way too much for her age. It’s very strange. And also painful.”

“She is one of a kind”, Helena agrees with a smile.

“Yeah”, Myka breathes out, out of things to say at this point. She has no idea where to go from here; not in this loop, and not in the grand scheme of things either. She’s just… lost. And she needs time to figure out where she stands and what to do.

(Good thing that time is, in fact, the only thing she knows for sure that she has, these days.)

“I’m too drained to care about the artifact right now”, she resumes after a few seconds of silence. “So I’m going to spend the rest of the day sitting on my bed with my pile of books to read next to me. You’re welcome to join, if you want.”

H.G. barely hesitates before nodding. “I’d like that.”

 

*

 

They sit and read in near-complete silence for hours, the tension between these slowly easing as time passes.

Helena doesn’t regret accepting the offer. She’s willing to give Myka comfort that won’t backfire once time resets again in any way she can, and this arrangement is without a doubt the best option for that. It’s a glimpse of something that could have been, an alternate timeline she’ll never get to live in, and it wakes up an ache deep inside of her.

For the first time in over a hundred years, she feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be. Where she belongs.

She wishes it could last longer than a few hours.

 

*

 

It’s not even evening yet, rather late afternoon, when Myka falls asleep next to her.

H.G. takes the book she was reading from her hands, puts it on the bedside table, switches off the alarm clock while she’s at it without realizing how useless that action would be in a time loop, then lowers Myka down more comfortably onto the bed so she won’t wake up with pain in her neck and back.

She stays standing there for almost a full minute after that, debating whether to leave or stay, but in the end the second option wins.

(She pretends it’s because she doesn’t want to risk Myka waking up and seeing her gone before the next loop starts, but in truth it’s because she’s not ready to say goodbye to the feeling of peace in her chest just yet.)

(Even though none of this will matter at midnight.)

 

*

 

Claudia wakes up in the Pete cave, confused by her surroundings for a moment before she realizes where she is and why: she was too lazy to go back to her room in the B&B last night and this is the most comfortable place in the Warehouse, so—

Wait—

_She didn’t wake up in her own bed_ —

“IT’S THURSDAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!” she yells at the top of her lungs, elated that the loops are finally over. For Myka’s sake.

“It took those two idiots long enough”, she can’t help but point out out loud, even if it’s just to the empty air around her.

There’s a permanent grin stuck on her face for an entire hour after that.

 

*

 

Myka wakes up to the sight of H.G. on the bed beside her, her clothes still on and a storm of conflicted emotions raging in her eyes.

“We seem to have a very different understanding of the words ‘time resets at midnight’”, Helena whispers with a minute smile.

The words cause all remnants of sleep to leave Myka in a rush as the situation finally sets in.

_Her alarm didn’t sound._

_Helena_ _is still there._

She scrambles for her phone with frantic hands, needing to see the time – and, more importantly, the _date_  – with her own two eyes. Without her even realizing, her breathing starts to quicken as fear and hope rise inside of her at once; she’s dangerously close to the edge of a panic attack when Helena’s hands close around hers and force her to turn around, anchoring her to reality more surely than her phone ever could.

“It’s Thursday, nearly 10am”, H.G. reveals, looking Myka in the eye. “Pete came to knock on your door a few hours ago but it didn’t wake you up, so I figured you needed the rest and told him to go to the Warehouse without you for once. To say he was surprised to find me here would be an understatement.”

“I really wonder why”, Myka chokes out between two bursts of laughter that quickly turns hysterical, then into tears a few seconds later.

H.G. pulls her close with no resistance, wrapping her arms around Myka’s shoulder and running a soothing hand through her hair as Myka lets it all out, relief washing away doubts and pain and anxiety in salted droplets that dampen Helena’s shirt in seconds.

“You’re alright, darling”, H.G. whispers again and again in Myka’s ear. “It’s over.”

 

*

 

It takes Myka a while to calm down. She does so a first time, her eyes drying out a little and her sobs becoming less and less frequent, until she realizes that baring her soul to Helena will in fact have consequences now and panic fills her all over again.

Where do they go from here?

What is H.G. going to do with what she knows?

Myka freezes.

Helena’s arms around her tighten.

“I’m staying.”

For a moment, Myka wonders if she dreamed the words – she’s rather sure she didn’t –, then asks herself how H.G. could have known what she was thinking about – if she somehow said something out loud without meaning to –, until she realizes that the ability to read the other very well probably goes both ways.

Well, at least that answers her question.

“You’re staying?”

She wishes her voice didn’t sound so wet, unsure, shaky and hopeful all at once, but after everything that was said the previous day, she can’t really find it in herself to care all that much.

(The previous day. The previous day that was a real yesterday, not just another occurrence of the same Wednesday.)

(Because now _it’s THURSDAY_.)

“I had more than enough time to mull it over while you slept”, H.G. murmurs. “I don’t think I could go back to Wisconsin now even if I wanted to. Not after… Not with the memories of yesterday.”

“So what now?”

“So, to quote you, I’ll try to ‘be brave for once and dare love you’. But I cannot make any promises – I have no idea how to do… this. Being in a stable relationship. It’s not something I have much experience in.”

“You’re H.G. Wells. You can figure out pretty much everything; I don’t see why you couldn’t figure that out too.”

Helena smiles before pressing a kiss to the top of Myka’s head. “You have too much faith in me.”

“No. You only think that because you don’t have enough faith in yourself.”

 

*

 

It takes almost the entire day for the reality of the situation to fully hit Myka. At first, for a few hours after she stops crying, she feels strangely detached, looking at the world around her as if she were seeing it through a screen – a clear image that isn’t really _there_  –, and the small rational part of her brain that is somehow still working informs her that it’s a logical after-effect of getting freed of the time loops. Which is an obvious explanation and doesn’t help make the feeling go away at all.

It takes dinner and interacting with all of her friends for the lock to break in Myka’s mind.

This isn’t just a dream.

It’s not a temporary respite from a never-ending nightmare.

It’s _real_.

And Helena is staying.

She says as much during dinner, promising to give everyone a full explanation when she feels a little bit more like herself. For now, she mostly needs rest… and constant reassurance that all of this is really happening.

She moves to kiss H.G. as soon as they’re back to her room, but Helena stops her with a thumb brushing over her lips.

“I owe Nate a clean break first”, she explains with a half-smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “And he’s been trying to call me all day, so I believe the quicker would be the better. Do you still have Rheticus’ compass?”

She does, but Myka still hesitates. There’s a doubt screaming at the back of her mind; what if—

“I am coming back”, H.G. says firmly. “As soon as I’m done, I’m coming back.” She stops, debates with herself a few seconds, then leans forward and presses their lips together in the softest kiss Myka has ever experienced in her life – a declaration of love and a promise all at once. “I choose you.”

 

*

 

Her talk with Nate doesn’t go the way H.G. thought it would; at all.

She expected arguing, bargaining, anger… The only thing she gets is the resigned look of a man who’s all too aware he’s lost the fight already.

“I knew it”, he smiles sadly. “I knew it from the moment I first saw the way you looked at her and the way she looked at you. I hoped I was wrong, but I knew it.”

“Nate… I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. And don’t look back. Go be happy. That’s all I’m asking from you – don’t hold back the way you always did with me. Don’t ruin this for yourself. Let her make you happy. You deserve it.”

Helena has to blink back tears. “Thank you. You’re a good man, Nate; I truly do hope you’ll find someone who’ll love you the way I never could.”

“Go say goodbye to Adelaide before I start crying.”

 

*

 

Helena teleports back to Myka’s room as soon as she’s out of the house.

Adelaide took her leaving incredibly well – much better than she hoped for, even with what Myka had told her. In truth, the girl’s only demand was the promise to call and visit regularly.

(Well, that, and getting to hear about what H.G. gets up to with her ‘amazing adventures’.)

(She has a feeling that this second promise will be a lot more tricky to keep without risking revealing too much.)

Myka is waiting for her, obviously nervous despite the promise she made before leaving, and Helena immediately smiles at her to reassure her.

“It’s done.”

“There’s a part of me that still can’t believe this is happening”, Myka admits.

“It will take some time for the effects of the time loop to fade, but they will”, Helena reassures her. “Which reminds me – I still have one last thing to do, and then I’ll be all yours.”

 

*

 

“Claudia?”

“Yes?”

“Where is Galileus’ notebook?”

Shocked, Claudia can’t help but stare, open-mouthed, at Helena. “How did you—”

“Everyone always seems to forget I was an agent of Warehouse 12”, H.G. remarks, annoyed. “I _collected_ that artifact in the 1890s. I know _exactly_ what it is and what it does.”

“Okay, yes, fair, but how did you _know_ —”

“Myka told me what happened to her. And narrowing down my list of suspects to one was remarkably easy once I’d guessed what made time resume its natural course.”

Claudia grimaces. “Oops?”

Ignoring her mostly false remorse, Helena insists: “Where is the notebook?”

“It’s in my room”, Claudia sighs, admitting defeat. “I was going to put it back tomorrow.”

“Give it to me now and I will rather place it in a new location of my choosing, if you would be so kind”, Helena counters with a touch of sarcasm. “Myka has been through enough.”

“I’m pretty sure I know how rough it was on her even better than you at this point and I feel more than guilty already, so there’s really no need to twist the knife”, Claudia mumbles.

Helena frowns, confused. “Wait— Didn’t you use the notebook on purpose?”

Claudia shrugs, a bit uncomfortable. “No. I found it under a shelf; no name, no description, nothing. A computer search didn’t even return a result – I’m going to guess all records were lost during the move from Warehouse 12… ah, the wonders of the world before the digital age! –, so, I mean, I wasn’t even sure it was an artifact! It looked like a notebook where people wrote down their wishes, and, well…” She grimaces. “I don’t necessarily always have the best impulse control.”

“What is the exact condition you wrote?”

“Word for word: ‘Myka comes back to her senses long enough to go back to Boone so she and H.G. will finally admit they’re two idiots in love with each other.’”

Helena’s eyes widen minutely. “You could have wished for anything, why…” she trails off.

“Why was that the first thing to cross my mind? Geez, who knows, is it because anyone with eyes – except you two, apparently – can see that you’re made for each other and belong together, or because I had to see Myka be utterly miserable for three months without being able to do anything to help?”

“You’re angry with me”, H.G. remarks.

It’s a statement, not a question, but Claudia answers anyway, even though it feels a lot like a repeat of a conversation that happened once already on her end.

“Oh, really? You think so? What gave it away – the tone, the face, or two seconds of thinking about how great it felt for me when you disappeared from my life without a word?!”

“I never—”

Claudia cuts her off immediately. “I know. We had that conversation already, even if you don’t remember it. And, look, I’ve mostly forgiven you – I even kinda get it, you’re shit at dealing with your feelings so you just… didn’t –, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Helena nods, understanding where Claudia is coming from. “Then, seeing as I’ll be staying here from now on, I do hope I can make it up to you with time.”

“YES!!!” Claudia whisper-exclaims, controlling the volume of her voice at the last second before it makes everyone rush over to see what’s happening. She claps her hands excitedly, jumping up and down while letting out a few squeals that she can’t hold back. “You’re staying. You’re staying!!”

A second later, she’s barrelling into H.G., squeezing her so tight that H.G. lets out an involuntarily wheeze when their bodies collide.

“I missed you”, she whispers, not releasing her hold one bit.

“I’m here now”, Helena answers, holding Claudia a lot more gently. “And I’m not going anywhere. Not anymore.”

“Good. Because if you freak out and run away on us again – which, by the way, would break Myka’s heart –, just know that I’ll track you down this time. And I’ll find you.”

H.G. smiles softly. “I have no doubt.”

“I really really fucking missed you, you know.”

“I know.”

 

*

 

“Claudia?”

“Hm?”

“The notebook.”

“Oh. Yeah. Shit, I had forgotten already – I’ll be right back.”

H.G. interrupts her before she’s even taken a step.

“Claudia?”

“Yes?”

“I meant it, earlier. Don’t you ever dare put Myka through something like that again.”

Claudia grimaces. “I didn’t mean to, but… By the time I figured out what was happening, with the notebook and all, I didn’t want to just make it stop and have it all been for absolutely nothing.”

The regret and guilt in her voice are sincere, so H.G. only levels her with one more look before nodding.

“Alright, then. I won’t tell her you’re responsible for this.”

“You wouldn’t need to anyway – I will.”

Helena can’t keep the surprise off her face.

“I don’t want to keep something that big from her”, Claudia explains. “I know she’ll be pissed at me for a while, especially since I pretended I wasn’t aware of the loops the entire time, but… She deserves the truth. Just… not right now. Not when it’s still so fresh for her. But I’ll tell her.”

“For what it’s worth?” H.G. replies. “It won’t take long for her to forgive you.”

Claudia smiles, strained and missing her usual confidence. “We’ll see about that, I guess.”

 

*

 

Myka is already in bed when Helena comes back into the room.

They spend most of the evening talking, catching up with each other’s life while carefully avoiding the more loaded topics that they’ll still have to broach soon enough; not everything is resolved – not by a mile – and they’ll have to deal with that, but not right now. Not when their newfound inability to keep their hands away from each other for too long means they spend just as much time exchanging light kisses and soft caresses as having a real conversation.

(Neither of them is complaining.)

 

*

 

Myka wakes up in bed with Helena on Friday, smiling sleepily at the gorgeous woman lying next to her. And it’s there, in the light of the morning sun, that it finally dawns on Myka that this will be her new normal from now on.

That waking up with Helena’s arm draped over her body is not a fantasy anymore, but a very real thing that will keep happening, again and again and again.

It feels right.

It feels like an evidence.

She’s not surprised when she realizes she’s already used to it.

 

*

 

(Myka wakes up to kisses the next morning.

The only thing she can think of as her eyes flutter close is that this feels even more than right.

It feels a lot like home.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH WELL. IT ONLY TOOK 18k TO GET THESE TWO IDIOTS TOGETHER.  
> Thank you to everyone who read it all!


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